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Paradise Valley Hawk Ridge Home Underway! Exciting times and an appropriate time to get a start on construction in Montana. We believe in breaking ground in the spring when the snow has melted away. This gives the best window of weather during the dryer months to get the exterior portion of a home’s construction done. Building when its warmer ensures that the work is done correctly. Building when its warmer and drier is less stressful on on the builders which makes for more precise construction practices,for example the taking of measurements are more accurate, materials are drier and more stable, and in general a more comfortable builder is a happier builder which usually leads to better quality. In general its better to line up your home construction so that the builder gets to work when its best to build. If that means waiting a bit for a builders schedule to line up with the warmer seasons its worth the wait. The quality of your home, its longevity, not to mention all of the money invested in the home, is well worth a short wait.

A note on getting a seasonal jump on construction: some people think that getting the foundation hole dug in the fall would give you a better jump on things. This is actually a big mistake. Never break ground until you are ready to do the work. All kinds of bad things can happen to the hole and ground if it is dug before winter. To name a few, the hole itself would allow winter snow to drift in setting the ground into a frozen state, which can take longer to thaw out in the spring. The foundation hole can allow moisture to infiltrate the ground making for a wet place to work in the spring or the foundation dig itself can cave in making for more digging before form work. Unless you plan to have the whole foundation put in and back-filled wait on the foundation excavation and instead focus on the following.

The fall is a good time to have your site laid out correctly in an un-rushed manner. Hawk Ridge which was laid out using the latest in surveying technology and completed by Matt of Caddis Engineering. After the layout is complete, the excavator can show up to do perk test dig hole for septic and put the driveway in. Having the driveway set in the fall ensures that there is a nice dry compact entry for the excavation equipment come spring. This avoids a huge mess, which in Montana can take years to heal. Landscape can seem durable, but in reality it’s very fragile in Montana.

Just another Beautiful Day in Paradise! Maybe just a tad windy though! Thank you Josh for the Photos!

The excavator, Scott Ross with LA excavation, looking over just what he has to do today. The contractor Josh of CWJ & Associates is present to convey his knowledge of Greenovision’s design. We met just hours before this photo was taken to discuss those last little details before the dig commenced.

Not a bad place to work and certainly won’t be a bad place to live! Scott Ross taking it all in.

Our Crimson Bluffs Home is well underway and we wanted to share its progress. Some of the challenges we face with siting a new home is how to get the elevations correct so that it sits in the site correctly. Every site has its own set of challenges. Some of the images that follow show diagrams of how we can get the building sit correctly. The following picture shows how we can use onsite fill material could rather than transporting it in, which always costs more.

Every home has major milestones during the design and construction phases. Our Quinn Creek Home design had a major milestone today: the Concrete Pour. It went well and is starting to take shape! You’ll see here some excavation photos from back in June and photos of today’s concrete pour. It was foggy up in the Bangtail Mountains.

The excavator broke ground this fall 2014 on the new home that we’re designing on Quinn Creek Road, just east of Bozeman, Montana (please see a write-up and renderings of this design here). As you can see, this home will be built on a beautiful piece of mountain-side property. We’re excited that the Quinn Creek project is underway and are looking forward to the home being built in the spring/summer of 2015. Thank you, Brad Nolan the excavator, and everyone else who has contributed to this project thus far.